High adventure on Laos zip-line jungle trek

High adventure in trek to treetops

In Laos, zip-line resorts are part of the sustainable tourism movement.

Photo By Jock Montgomery Photography

It took an intense effort to put 12 zip lines in place in the dense jungle. Riders on the line see sights flashing past like scenes in a newsreel.

Photo By Jock Montgomery Photography

The via ferrata, or "iron road," is the climb up a cliff face with rebar hand- and footholds.

Photo By Jock Montgomery Photography

Zip lining in Laos.

Photo By Jock Montgomery Photography

Zip lining in Laos.

Photo By Jock Montgomery Photography

Zip lining in Laos.

Photo By Jock Montgomery Photography

Zip lining in Laos.

Photo By Jock Montgomery Photography

Zip lining in Laos.

Photo By Jock Montgomery Photography

Zip lining in Laos.

Photo By Jock Montgomery Photography

Zip lining in Laos.

Growing up, I shared every kid's main fantasies: flying and living in a tree house. And that's pretty much how Tree Top Explorer, a relatively new resort in Laos' Dong Hue Sao National Park, was presented to me.

"We'll sail over the jungle on some of the longest zip lines in Asia," my photographer friend Jock Montgomery explained, "and sleep in a tree house, 60 feet high in the forest canopy."

Zip-lining excursions in Laos (and throughout Southeast Asia, from Thailand and Vietnam to the Philippines) have become wildly popular in recent years. In Laos, though, they're also an important part of the sustainable tourism movement. Built in national parks or near game preserves, they provide local agricultural villages with a lucrative (and reliable) new source of income. They also transform former poachers into wildlife advocates, hiring them as guides and conservationists.

We arrived with a small group in early March, Laos' dry season. The roar of the 300-foot-high Kamet ("gibbon") Falls, big as a mural from the resort's rustic main deck, was so loud that Aod - our sinewy local guide - had to yell to be heard.

"It's much more beautiful in the wet season," he shouted. "Sitting here, at the restaurant, the mist from the waterfall would get us wet."

It was wet enough. The jungle is already a damp, claustrophobic mystery to me - crowded with chlorophyll-soaked overgrowth, a slippery matting of leaves, thorny vines and hooped roots that threatened to send me sprawling. It's a place of hidden signs and signals that you either grow up with and understand intuitively or spend a lifetime trying, with no success, to fathom.

The steep path down to the zip-lining platform precluded any real immersion in the environment's natural history, as my central task was to keep from losing my footing along the precipitous trail. There was activity all around me - erratic butterflies, exotic birds, the high whistling of unseen insects, the rustle of ground squirrels out of sight among the trees - but the air seemed thick and sweat stung my eyes. The main thing I think about when I walk through any jungle is how much I prefer open spaces.

And open space is exactly what you get, very abruptly, after clamping your pulley onto the steel cable, taking a running start, and launching yourself into the air above the canopy.

It's breathtaking how the world opens up. You can't stop on a zip line - you can't even slow down as you speed along gravity's rainbow - so the scenery flashes across your retina like a newsreel: the trees below, the distant hills receding in a haze, the Disney-like spectacle of the waterfalls cascading to your right. And the narrow riverbed of huge tumbled boulders 200 feet below, upon which you will fall if the zip line breaks (it won't).

And before you know it the guide at the receiving platform is shouting "Brake!" and you pull your hooked stick down on the buzzing cable behind you and let friction do its work. Pull too hard, and you'll stop too soon - the guides have to reel you in like a struggling marlin. Too little braking and you barrel onto the wooden platform, careening into the arms of the terrified guides like a marionette shot from a cannon.

It's easy to forget, while you're sailing above the trees, waterfalls and gorges at about 40 mph, what it took to actually put zip lines in this place. Before Tree Top Explorer opened in January 2011, Aod told me, scores of workers carried the cables through the jungle and undergrowth "like ants" - trekking and rappelling down cliffs, across rivers, into ravines and up the other sides with the steel loops over their bare shoulders.

There are 12 zip lines in all; the longest, at more than 1,400 feet, is a braided steel cable weighing about 2 tons. Installing a jungle zip line is a labor on par with building one of the minor pyramids, only sillier.

Every day at Tree Top includes jungle hiking (with village guides); at least six adrenalized zips; swimming and bathing in cold, bright waterfalls; and picnics. The food is, um, rustic, served on a broad mat of spread banana leaves: sticky rice and spicy tomato puree, dried beef strips and fish cakes, deep-fried onion rings, over-boiled vegetables.

Aod (pronounced "odd") is a zip-lining daredevil, performing all kinds of crazy, monkey-like contortions as he flies above the jungle canopy.

"I feel like Superman," he grins, landing on the platform after zipping upside down. Which raises the question: Why doesn't the Man of Steel ever try a new flying position?

Despite his shenanigans, there's a phrase you hear constantly at Tree Top Explorer. You hear it while you're weaving through the bush, clamping onto the zip line and disconnecting after your ride. The local guides are indoctrinated with it, and long before they can say "good morning" in English, they know its meaning: "Safety first."

But this is the jungle, and one can't protect against everything. Hiking can be treacherous. Bugs and snakes can bite. The hooked-stick hand brake is awkward and crude; if you should accidentally drop it as you're zipping - not difficult to do - you'll go crashing at high speed into the receiving platform, with no ability to slow down.

One group reported being swarmed by bees while on one of the platforms; badly stung, they were subject to a difficult and dangerous evacuation, some suffering from anaphylactic shock. The local guides are not trained as EMTs, and any injury or accident is potentially life-threatening. If you go, make absolutely sure you have good insurance - the kind that covers emergency evacuation.

A place like Tree Top, remote and primitive, makes you realize that the disclaimer you've signed in the main office means what it says: You might die.

After one of the shorter zips - while standing on the landing platform, and taking a picture of the person coming down next - I put my foot in the wrong place. A board was missing, and my right leg went through. It stopped at my hip. It could have been much worse, but it was not good. By the next afternoon my entire leg would be black and blue, with a huge raspberry on my outer thigh.

After I'd limped back to the lodge, Mr. Buon - the Tree Top manager, visiting from the main office in Pakse - tried a traditional cure. He applied a poultice of peepul leaves, heated over the campfire, to my injured leg.

(Later, I was able to research this remedy. Peepul tree is of great medicinal value, one website affirms. Its leaves serve as a wonderful laxative as well as a tonic for the body. It helps to control the excessive amount of urine released during jaundice.)

I used our special moment to ask how Tree Top Explorer, only 2 years old, was affecting the nearby villages.

"From the beginning, we use all locals to help us for building and working here," Buon said in halting but melodious English. "After that, we give training for local people." He applied a smoking peepul leaf to my leg, and I yelped. "At the villages we have more than 35 of the locals working as guides. Also 18 of the ladies are cooking, taking care of laundry, and doing other jobs."

With every group of visitors, Buon said, they rotate the families, so everyone has a chance to share in the benefits of tourism.

This is a good thing. Before Tree Top Explorer opened in 2011, the villagers' main source of income was coffee growing: arabica and rustica. But the price fluctuates quite a bit, and the nearby Dao Corp. - which holds something of a monopoly over local beans - makes it difficult for small farmers to get a fair price.

"Right now the villagers can get quite a lot of money from our project," said Buon, "because people are interested in this area. You can see: nice waterfalls and nice nature. And we already make a plan for sauna and massage near the dormitory. There." He brushed the dry leaves off my leg. "Feel a little better?"

Actually, yes. But I did need to find a restroom.

The next afternoon, as we relaxed by a river punctuated by pools and cataracts, Aod told me of another Tree Top benefit.

"There used to be a lot of animals living in the park," he said. "Only 10 years ago, you could see tigers. But the people killed them. They were also hunting wild pig, and monkey, and squirrel. But now a lot of animals have come back. We ask the hunters to come join our project - as jungle guides - and they stop hunting."

In 2010, I'd visited another Lao zip-lining camp: the Gibbon Experience, in northern Laos' Bokeo Nature Reserve. Though notoriously publicity-shy, Gibbon (which is somewhat more developed than Tree Top) also funds forest protection, and has had some success keeping the local gibbon population out of the village stewpots.

Tree Top Explorer sets aside revenue from groups like ours, Aod explained, to create a village fund. It's used for everything from building Buddhist temples to emergency medical care.

"We cannot stop them hunting forever," Aod allowed. "But we spend a lot of time talking to them, and convincing them that if there are no animals left, the tourists will stop coming."

Tree Top Explorer sleeps 16; the resort is almost constantly booked. There are two tree houses with four beds, and four with two. Each of the Swiss Family Robinson cabins is built around the trunk of a massive tree, whose own nocturnal residents - which we never saw, though they ate our Snickers bar - skitter across the thatched roof at night.

The single beds are sheltered by nets; a small rattan table and chair served as my evening writing perch. (Headlamps only; candles are forbidden, for obvious reasons.) There's a hushing, rushing sound from wind through the surrounding trees, and the steady white noise of the Kamet waterfall. Our bathroom was small but clean. Flush water filled the tank, but there's no other plumbing. Where does the waste go? Let's just say you don't want to be standing anywhere near the base of the tree.

Though Buon has big plans, there were few amenities during our visit - no snacks, no electricity (the generator was broken), no lanterns. There was a solar shower house. And a bucket, filled with cold river water and not nearly enough cans of Beer Lao.

The most anticipated part of the stay, for some people, is the way you actually get out of the jungle. About an hour's hike above the lodge is a via ferrata, or "iron road": a vertical climb up a rock face, using hammered-in rebar handholds and footholds. Not so easy with a gimpy leg. I gritted my teeth and got on with it, trying not to look down, hoisting myself (and my daypack) from step to step, clamping on my safety carabiner, reaching the next step, pulling the carabiner off, and clamping it to the next iron rung. I glanced back once over my shoulder; my good leg shook like a wet dog.

Near the top I overcame my jitters and stood on a narrow ledge, looking out over the hazy jungle. In the distance, far below, I could make out the main lodge, the restaurant, the tree houses, and a few of the zipping platforms, their narrow steel bands arcing impossibly over the gorges. Amazing, how it all interconnected into a wild adventure fantasy. Jock stood beside me, wearing about 40 pounds of camera gear.

"It's like a Chinese puzzle," he said.

"Yeah," said Sandy, a young British woman who'd struggled up the cliff to stand beside us. She shook her head. "It's just mental that someone decided to build this in the first place."

I knew what she meant, but took a more generous view. The people who dreamed up Tree Top were basically big kids who never grew up - and never forgot their dreams.

They also remembered to replace that missing board.

If you go

TREE TOP EXPLORER

Getting there: A full adventure at Tree Top Explorer lasts about three days. Add a day on each end to get there and leave. In-and-out includes a short flight from Bangkok to Ubon (we took Nok Air), a cab to the Thailand-Laos border, visa formalities and a van into Pakse. You'll spend the night there. After a breakfast buffet at the Pakse Hotel (where we stayed, though there are cheaper alternatives and lot of good restaurant options in Pakse), a Tree Top truck takes you the 90 minutes to Ban Nong Luang village, where the hike into Dong Hue Sao National Park begins.

Best time to go: Our trip was in early March, the dry season. Check the site and ask about your preferred dates, as climate is changing globally. The wet season is reportedly very different - the waterfalls are more spectacular and the rivers higher. The steep jungle trails are more slippery. There are also some leeches to contend with, and increased mosquito activity (we saw almost none in early spring).

Cost: As of summer 2013, cost for a three-day visit with all costs included (from Pakse, except tips) was $360.00.

OTHER ACTIVITIES

We hired motorbikes (about $8/day) and spent a wonderful afternoon visiting Ban Saphai and Don Kho, two small islands about 12 miles north of Pakse. Both are famous for their fishing villages and for their silk and cotton weaving - truly beautiful work.